Silver Price Above $16 On Weak US Dollar, Greece Uncertainty

The silver price began the week on a strong note, rising Monday to a high of $16.22 per ounce. That's up fairly substantially from Friday's close of $15.96.

The silver price began the week on a strong note, rising Monday to a high of $16.22 per ounce. That's up fairly substantially from Friday's close of $15.96, though it's a far cry from $16.70, where the white metal was sitting as of June 1.

Looking at what was behind silver's gain, Reuters states that a number of factors were at play. Those include chart-based buying and a weak US dollar.

However, perhaps the most important price driver was Greece. Talks aimed at preventing a default and a possible exit from the Eurozone for the country recently collapsed, and the news outlet quotes Mike Dragosits, senior commodity strategist at TD Securities in Toronto, as saying that those events are "certainly keeping a floor under precious metals."

While that's good news for investors interested in such metals, there's of course no guarantee that Greece will continue to buoy prices. Indeed, Reuters states that moving forward, attention is likely to shift to a US Federal Reserve meeting scheduled for June 16 to 17 — the hope is that the central bank will indicate the timing of its planned interest rate hike.

"Yellen can now be a bit more optimistic about growth, maybe she will intimate that the path is being prepared for a rate rise (by year-end)," Societe Generale (EPA: GLE) analyst Robin Bhar told the news outlet.

It will be interesting to see how the silver price reacts as the Fed meeting plays out; already at close of day Monday it had fallen back down to $16.03. Meanwhile, the gold price was at $1,185.65 per ounce after reaching a high of $1,189.50 earlier in the day.